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Imperial Valley’s Local Entity completes its work

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 18, 2008 at 6:33 am

As part of the controversial QSA agreement, funds are available for the Imperial Valley to distribute to help mitigate the effects of fallowing, which have a ripple-effect through the agricultural-based community. The Local Entity is the group that was formed to distribute the mitigation funds, which ideally were to go towards development and re-training for those most affected by the fallowing. From the Imperial Valley Press:

The hardest part is over for the Local Entity and it doesn’t look like it will reconvene.

The Imperial Irrigation District board accepted the Local Entity’s recommendations this week in handing out the final dollars it was tasked to dole out. It’s taken several years just to get the first distribution done.

Now the IID board will decide who will be responsible for handing out the rest of the money in the bank and future payouts from the water transfer agreement. “The IID board needs to take over the Local Entity decisions,” IID Board President John Pierre Menvielle said. “We don’t need to put this on the backburner.”

At stake are the funds that are meant to help mitigate the impacts of farmers keeping acres idle to transfer water to the coast. So far only $3.5 million has been spoken for and IID officials estimate by the year’s end there will be $12 million available for farm service providers and organizations to create jobs and training.

Andy Horne, a former IID director and former original Local Entity member, said it may not be wise to have elected officials deciding where the money goes. “The concept of having a community group that doesn’t have any political agendas or pressure on them is sound,” Horne said. “It probably would have functioned better had it not had elected people like myself.”